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Amazon Prime Day: History and Statistics

Kristin McGrath

Updated January 10, 2019

A brief history of Amazon Prime Day -- and statistics that show its rapid growth.

Amazon Prime Day got its start in 2015 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Amazon’s founding. It takes place in the middle of July. No date has officially been announced for Prime Day 2019, but it started July 16 in 2018. That date was a bit later than usual, thanks to the World Cup. In past year's it's taken place between July 10 and 12.

Strictly speaking, Prime Day is not a “day,” but a more-than 30-hour global deal marathon for Amazon Prime members. It lasted for 36 hours in 2018. To take advantage of the deals, you must have a Prime membership by the time Prime day starts. Prime Day takes place all over the world in countries that offer Prime, including the U.S., Spain, Germany, Japan and more.

Prime Day is a fast-moving beast. It offers many simultaneous discounts on products throughout the whole event, but also short-lived lightning deals (which appear and disappear at specific times). Some deals even begin weeks before. For example, in recent years, Amazon has slashed prices on some of its own Echo products a few days early to hype up consumers.

Notable Moments in Prime Day History

July 6, 2015: Meet Prime Day. Amazon announces the first Prime Day in a press release. The wording makes it very clear that Amazon intends Prime Day to become a summertime counterpoint to Black Friday.

July 13, 2015: Walmart, Amazon’s biggest competitor, wastes no time in firing back at Prime Day. In a blog, Walmart announces that it, too, will be holding a week-long deal event in July -- but that it would not charge “$100 to get access to a sale,” unlike “some retailers.” In addition to being the latest battle in the Amazon vs. Walmart war, Walmart’s competing sale begins the trend of Black Friday in July -- the flurry of sales that pops up around Prime Day.

July 12, 2016: The second Prime Day takes place. This year, Amazon supplements its “Everything is on sale” approach (mocked by critics as its “garage sale” approach) with healthy price drops on its own devices (Echo, Fire TV, Fire Tablets, etc.) However, many shoppers experience glitches in adding items to their carts and checking out, causing frustration when they missed lightning deals as a result.

Hot items on the second Prime Day were Amazon’s own devices, Lenovo laptops, iRobot Roomba cleaning robots, headphones, toys and shoes.

July 10, 2017: The third Prime Day begins. Amazon begins offering a preview feature in its app so that shoppers can see deals 24 hours before they go live. Prime Day also gets an earlier start than in previous years, with the first deals appearing at 9 p.m. ET on July 10. For the first time, Amazon also makes Prime Day deals available to voice shoppers two hours early via Alexa devices.

In addition to its usual discounts on products, Amazon begins offering discounts on its services, including Amazon Music Unlimited, Prime Pantry, Amazon Video and Kindle Unlimited.

At this point, plenty of major retailers are holding their own concurrent Black Friday in July sales, including Macy’s, Kohl’s, Best Buy, Nordstrom and Dell. To compete with Prime, many of these sales include free shipping.

July 12, 2017: With the numbers in, Amazon declares the third Prime Day another success. Prime Day sales grew 60% over Prime Day 2016, according to Amazon’s numbers.

July 3, 2018: Amazon announces that Prime Day 2018 will run for 36 hours, from July 16 at 3 p.m. EST through July 17. It's a bit later than in past years (likely to avoid competition with the World Cup).

Prime Day 2018 has a number of new features, including:

Prime Day Launches: Certain products are launched for Prime members only.

Whole Foods deals: Taking full advantage of its Whole Foods acquisition, Amazon offers $10 to spend on Prime Day for any members who spend $10 at Whole Foods July 11 to 17. Amazon Prime Rewards Visa cardholders get double rewards on Whole Foods purchases. And certain Prime Day deals on Amazon devices were available at brick-and-mortar Whole Foods stores.

Unboxing Prime Day events:* Amazon shipped giant boxes to select cities throughout the world that, when opened, revealed special prizes and events, including private concerts.

July 16, 2018: Prime Day 2018 launches to plenty of glitches, including error pages when users click on product categories and an infinite loop when users click on "Shop all Deals." Frustrated shoppers take to Twitter, and errors continue until late in the evening of July 16.

Those who were able to make purchases found plenty of deals, though, including:

On the first Prime Day, customers ordered more than 34 million items worldwide and order growth outstripped the previous Black Friday by 18%. In 2018, Prime Day shoppers purchased 100 million products, more than triple the number of items purchased on Prime Day 2015.

In 2018, 25% of consumers planned to spend at least $100 on Prime Day (Source: Offers.com)

Prime Day has only grown since its inaugural year (2015). Sales were up 50% year over year on the second Prime Day (2016). In 2017, sales were up 60% over 2016. As for 2018, Amazon hasn't released the YoY percentage increase in sales, but has said Prime Day 2018 sales were up 400% over a typical day. (Source: Slice Intelligence and Amazon)

The second Prime Day (2016) beat out the previous Cyber Monday’s sales by 19%. It also comprised 74% of e-commerce sales conducted on that date. In 2017, Prime Day beat the previous Cyber Monday’s sales by 33%. (Source: Slice Intelligence 2016 and 2017 data)

Consumer behavior

About 48% of all U.S. consumers had a Prime account heading into Prime Day 2018, according to a June 2018 Offers.com survey.

18% of consumers planned on participating in Prime Day 2018 (down from 19% in 2017), while 47% said they’d wait to see the sales before deciding (down from 55% in 2017), according to an Offers.com survey. Per the same survey, 19% of consumers said Prime Day sales hadn’t lived up to the hype.

“Heavy” Amazon shoppers (those who average more than four Amazon purchases per month) comprised 50% of the Prime Day shoppers in 2016 (up from 41% of buyers in 2015). (Source: Slice Intelligence)

Popular Prime Day products

The most desired Prime Day sales heading into Prime Day 2018 were on electronics and home goods, with 41% of consumers saying they hoped to find deals in each of these categories. Clothing followed at 28%, then toys and games (20%), then tools (16%). (Source: Offers.com)

Top-selling products in the U.S. for Prime Day 2018 included the Fire TV Stick, Instant Pot (six-quart), 23andMe DNA Test, the Echo Dot and LifeStraw Personal Water Filter. (Source: Amazon)

Top products sold on Prime Day 2018 according to Amazon were: smart home devices (more than 1 million sold); Ring doorbells (which had their biggest day ever on Prime Day 2018) and the Instant Pot six-Qt. 7-in-1 (more than 300,000 sold) (Source: Amazon).

Amazon’s own products made up 63% of unit sales across all items in the Top 10 items sold in 2017. The most-sold item in 2017 was the Echo Dot. (Source: Slice Intelligence)

About the Author

Kristin is a savings and deals expert at BlackFriday.com. Her background in personal-finance journalism — along with her own enthusiasm for shopping and travel — drive her passion for helping consumers become savvy and informed bargain-hunters.

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